


Family Traits Reboot

by XtaticPearl



Series: Marvel Writing Challenge [1]
Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon)
Genre: Bittersweet, Child Abandonment, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Past Child Abuse, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 08:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16850725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtaticPearl/pseuds/XtaticPearl
Summary: Clint doesn't know if closure really works but some things must be tried to understand. Sam goes along for the ride.





	Family Traits Reboot

**Author's Note:**

> My assigned character was: Clint Barton.   
> Prompt words were: Embarrassing. Father. Ground

It's fair in his mind that Scott takes the brunt. None of it would have begun if not for his annoying idea of 'team-bonding' and Clint really was right when he said it was going to be terrible. Natasha had shot him a half-observant look but -

He didn't really want to make a big deal of it. Thor certainly had more visibly screwed up family dynamics anyway. 

It had got him  _ thinking _ though and that always sucked, it gave him a headache to think about his own family or whatever bits he knew about them. He didn't want to know where Barney was. He honestly couldn't care any lesser about his  _ dad _ , whatever name he was going by now. If he was alive. If he hadn't been beaten to a pulp by some angry victim of his last con. 

It didn't matter. It shouldn't have mattered. 

God _ damn _ Scott. 

The road is uneven in turns and he’s honestly glad for the occasional pothole, letting the jolt ground him even as his tag-along partner keeps silent. 

He would probably have had it better with  _ Scott _ even if the guy totally deserved a training session with Cap. Probably even with Hulk. 

Clint breathed and the air smells stale, unearthed after a landslide buried the alive. It’s dry and his lungs swallow it whole. 

Sam is solid behind him and Clint lets the bike gun forward, ignoring any thought of talking. 

The house is pretty much an insult to the term ‘farmhouse’ in idealistic standards but Clint had never really seen many ideal homes and this - well, this looked like somebody had lived in. 

“Still wanna go through?” Sam isn’t pushy and he’s got a mom he loves so he probably is trying to be  _ sensitive _ to Clint’s whole situation. Clint doesn’t understand sensitivity when it applies to himself and it makes his spine brittle, his tongue sharper. The Ringmaster always said he was built for the rough and Clint hates  _ that _ guy and still -

He doesn’t respond and keeps walking, letting Sam decide what he wants to do. He’s a kid. Or maybe not. Clint honestly doesn’t understand why he insisted on coming along even if he does know and if Sam wants to be part of this new circus then he can learn to make his choices. 

Sam comes along and Clint is almost tempted to tell him to go away. He doesn’t. 

The doorbell is broken and Clint can almost hear a phantom Tony rustling through his emergency tool-kit because the man can’t handle things remaining broken. Even if he himself -

Clint presses the broken doorbell harder and bites his tongue. He’s fine. Nothing is really always broken.

Except for goddamn Scott’s  _ face  _ when he gets back. 

Sam raps on the door from beside him and Clint doesn’t budge, making the younger guy lean into his shoulder to fit into frame. There’s only so much he wants to budge for people today. 

The woman who opens the door is nothing like Clint would have imagined and he had tried hard to not imagine much from the moment he had decided to do this. He had expected someone with a sharper dress, bright eyes, younger. The last one was prominent as far as his memory dictated - they were always younger. 

The lady in front of him, with tired dark eyes and a modest olive skirt, was not the picture he had painted. 

“Yes?” she asked and Clint could feel every vein on the roof of his mouth. The ridges on his thumbs seem prominent in feeling and his feet don’t move. 

“Can I help you?”

_ No _ , Clint wants to say,  _ you can’t _ . 

Sam stays silent for a second before he clears his throat, taking lead like the well-raised boy he is. 

“Hello, ma’am,” he says with a polite smile, bringing out the fake ‘company id’ they had picked up before leaving “I’m Sam and this is my friend Clint. We’ve come from the city to talk about your husband.”

_ My father _ , Clint corrects in his head but forces himself to keep his face neutral when the woman looks at him. 

“Albert?” she asks and Clint almost loses it, swallowing the hysterical laugh when her eyes land back on him, “Are you - he never told me he had younger friends - are you from the company?”

“Your husband trained Clint here,” Sam says and Clint has a vivid image of his dad throwing him out of a trailer, “We have a few things of his. I don’t think the management realized it earlier but we thought we’d get them to you now. If you’d like them, of course.”

“Oh,”  _ Albert _ ’s widow says and nods slowly before moving in, “Right, sure, I didn’t - well, I guess I didn’t expect anyone taking so much trouble for a security guard’s belongings and especially after so long. But it’s okay, please, come in.”

Clint doesn’t know Albert so he doesn’t relate to the house he enters. He remembers  _ Paul _ . Loud-mouthed, angry, con-artist Paul who left when Clint wasn’t really old enough to help Barney earn. Paul Barton had been a shithead. Albert Gunney apparently had pictures with his wife and kid.

There’s an honest to God Christmas portrait framed in a dusty white metal piece and Clint wants to throw himself out the window. 

He doesn’t  _ fit _ here. Who is he here  _ for _ ?

Nina Gunney is a kind woman despite her stilted movement and soon they’re sitting in the living room’s couch, all three of them. There’s biscuits from a can, juice from a carton, and dread from a dubious past. 

Clint can’t bring himself to hate this woman who got to see a different man than he remembers but his ribs ache with remembered pain when her eyes light up at the small pouch of things they had recovered from her husband’s old company. 

When she touches the worn-out cap with a fondness of familiarity, Clint swallows biting words with the orange juice.  

He wonders if she’s ever met Barney. He hopes she never does because Barney would kill her. 

“He never spoke about you much,” she says, non-threatening and casual as she urges Sam to have another dried cracker, “Were you close?”

“We,” Clint watches her looking interested, expecting tidbits of her lost husband, “Close enough, ma’am. He - he was a private man.”

“Yes,” she laughs softly, “he said he liked listening more. I figure he just had too many thoughts to fit in words sometimes.”

_ Oh he had words _ , a voice reminds viciously in Clint’s brain and he nods politely at Nina. 

“He didn’t talk about his life before - uh, us,” Clint makes sure his voice isn’t tense, “Did he have many friends? We never got to come to his funeral so we didn’t meet others but - he must have had a colourful life, huh?”

“Oh, no,” Nina shakes her head sadly and leans in a bit, like it was a secret, “Poor man had nobody till we met. It broke my heart but he was always so embarrassed of his past. Never liked what he’d got before, the people he knew weren’t right for him. Used to say that he’d always wished for a real family, bless his soul. He was a real good father to my Tim, mind you, but he always was just trying so hard. Loved the home and quiet life. That’s why we came here, you know. A farm and the family. Strange maybe but my Albert always said that it was worth all the wealth in the world.”

There’s a buzzing in his head and Clint can feel Sam take over the conversation but nothing seems to really matter. 

He remembered being all kid of scraped knees and scared eyes at eight. Barney was no better at ten. One night they’d had a family of three and the next day they were called orphans in the circus. 

_ He was always so embarrassed of his past _ .

Clint strangled the Paul in his head as they took leave from the house. Nina clutched Albert’s belongings carefully as she shut the door and Clint hoped that the Paul he had dumped into her new treasure would rid his own monsters. 

“You okay?” Sam looks older in the dusk spreading around them and Clint wants to get this boy back to his mother. He also is grateful that Sam is standing beside him. There’s a wisdom to well-suited age that broken boys don’t get and Clint wants to borrow some from Sam. 

“Give me a minute,” he says and walks over to the small backyard where there’s fresh soil under flower-beds. The ground is nourished here, unlike a trailer’s dusty roads. This is a home he never had and Clint knows that there is no closure to that. 

It won’t stop being true the next time families are discussed, even if Scott or Nat or anyone knows better. 

“Hey, Albert,” he mutters, crouching near the soil and exhales, “Fuck you, Paul.”

When he gets back to the bike, Sam is already on it, smugly grinning at him. 

“I’m driving”

“I can walk,” Clint raises a brow but Sam rolls his eyes as he throws the other helmet at Clint, “Seriously, you’re what? Seventeen? Do you have a license? I don’t want to die at a seventeen-year-old’s hands, dude.”

“I  _ carry _ you in battles, you whiny ass,” Sam counters and Clint likes this kid so much he wishes Barney could see. He’s a better kind of ass than Clint was and maybe that’s why it’s easy. 

Or maybe it’s just not right for the Barton boys to be good brothers or family to each other and fit better with strangers. 

“You crash into a tree and I’m gonna haunt you for the rest of your life, Wilson,” Clint warns even as he grudgingly gets on the bike behind his team-mate, “Do you know to balance? Oh my god, do you know the  _ gears _ -”

“Hell yeah!” Sam whoops as he kicks-off, completely ignoring Clint’s rant and Clint -

He’s okay with it. He can have this annoying little guy’s back. Some things could change in family traits.

  
  
  
  



End file.
